Detailed Description:

You’ve got a new experience design job, product, project, or even just a new engagement, and you want to make a real splash coming in the door – you need to hit the ground running with very little time at all for ramp-up. Sound familiar? Regardless of platform or client, browser or native application, or even Real World experience design – you can hit the ground running if you know how to prep beforehand and have access to the right tools.
This workshop provides a great jump-start for you to begin rocking on day one and every day thereafter.

In this introductory workshop, strategist and experience architect Jonathan Firestone will lead attendees through a number of deliverables designed to enable the practitioner
to hit the ground running with meaningful, useful documentation. His methodology provides strategic guidelines with far reaching impact on business development, design and development processes. You can support a rapid design regardless of the kind of engagement you’re encountering, and easily scale up or down regardless of team size or your role.

Jonathan Firestone, Senior Experience Architect for Macquarium Intelligent Communications, an Atlanta-based Experience Design firm, leads the Washington, DC
efforts of Macquarium’s practice. Jonathan is currently providing experience design consulting services to the U.S. General Services Administration and is contributing to one
of the largest eCommerce sites in the world, the GSA Advantage!® program. Jonathan guides clients, teams, products, and projects in synthesizing business goals and user needs into design solutions that create real business value. Jonathan is a proven expert in the field of experience design and deployment with over 20 years of experience in corporate, government, education, and non-profit environments.

Session 2: Introduction to Qualitative User Research - Cory Lebson

Although it seems like your website or application makes sense, you want to make sure that it’s going to be usable to your target audience. Where do you begin? What should you plan for?

In this introductory workshop, user research expert Cory Lebson will lead attendees through a number of tools and techniques for conducting your own user research. Learn what kinds of research can be used to assess experience. Find out when and why you should conduct focus groups to assess a web strategy and how to actually plan for a focus group. Learn how best to think about users during the development process and then test your assumptions with a usability study. Assess the organization of information with a card sort. And consider the best ways to get stakeholder buy-in for your research initiatives.

Cory Lebson has functioned as a user experience consultant since 1994. He established Lebsontech LLC (www.lebsontech.com) in 1997, and in 2008, he transformed this side-business into a full-time occupation. Since then, with a staff of three, his core client base has included a number of Federal government, commercial, non-profit, and educational organizations. Lebsontech is focused primarily on UX strategy, user research and associated training.

Cory also greatly enjoys teaching topics related to user experience and technology and conducts monthly seminars. He has been featured on the radio, has published several recent articles on user experience, and is a frequent speaker at local area events and national conferences. Cory has an MBA focusing in marketing and technology management, as well as an MA in sociology and a BS in psychology.

Cory is a current board member and former president of the Washington DC chapter of the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) and is on the Board of Directors of UXPA International, as the Director of Strategic Partnerships.